Affordable Care Act Hangs in the Balance

Twila Brase is the president and co-founder of the Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom. She’s a registered nurse, a certified public health nurse and the speaker on the Health Freedom Minute, a daily commentary which airs on radio stations across the nation. She’s the author of ‘Big Brother in the Exam Room: The Dangerous Truth About Electronic Health Records’.

Friday, a federal judge struck down the so-called, ‘Affordable Care Act’. Last week, while former President Obama was encouraging people to sign up, Twila was encouraging people not to do that, due to concerns that she outlined on this broadcast.

In 2012, Chief Justice Roberts said that the penalty for being uninsured is not really a mandate, we’re just going to call it a tax. He said that under the taxing authority of Congress, the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. Conservative justices thought this was going be written by Roberts in the other direction but instead he left things in place and called the penalty a tax.

In a tax bill at the end of last year, Congress took that tax and brought it down to zero, so the law is not generating any revenue. Numerous attorneys general in different states came together in a lawsuit to say that this penalty tax, which was essential to the entire law, is now gone, so the rest of the ACA cannot survive.

The judge in this case declared ‘summary judgment’ in favor of these attorneys general, but he did not issue an injunction to stop the entire ACA. In the meantime the law continues ‘as-is’. It’s expected to be appealed.

How does Twila feel about the timing of this? After all, it came on the eve of the deadline of signing up for Obamacare and after Congress left. Can people get health care for an amount significantly less than a cell phone bill as was stated by President Obama? What are some of the ‘Top 10 Terribles’ involving The Obamacare insurance exchanges?

These and other questions were answered by Twila as she shared her expertise on the subject along with answering questions fielded by Crosstalk listeners.